"All honor to my witch-stone!" she exclaimed. "We 've snared our wolf at last. Now to fetch the forester."
She turned quickly away to the door, but paused on the threshold, to step back and glance out through the window.
"The night is clear; yet a cloud may drift across. It is well to make certain," she muttered, and she drew the huddled form along the wall, until it lay across the doorway. Then, fully satisfied, she slipped out and glided swiftly down the dark passages until she gained the bower-chamber. Within, lighted by a row of waxen tapers, the bower-maidens sat about a long table, plying needle and bodkin on the garments of the king and their mistress, while an old priest droned a homily for the edification of their manners.
Fastrada beckoned the nearest girl to approach, and spoke to her in the doorway: "I go to sit with our lord and Deacon Alcuin in the East Tower. You will find Count Gerold playing at chess. Go, bid him bring my sampler from my morning-room and fetch it after me."
"I beg pardon, my dame, am I to fetch it, or Count Gerold?"
"The count, you silly trull! Could I trust such as you to wander at night when young men are about? Go, and see that you return quickly under the eye of the good deacon."
As the maiden hurried away, her cheeks aflame, and her blue eyes wet with the starting tears, her mistress paced calmly back by the way she had come. It was some little distance around to the East Tower, and she was not yet certain whether it would be best for Gerold or for herself to arrive first. There was time to decide at leisure; for the young count, presuming on the king's favor, would probably play out his match before he came to do her bidding. All the better! What greater joy than to stroll along the dark passages, where one was at liberty to give outward play to all the bitter-sweet thoughts of revenge?
But while the witch's daughter glided like a trailing weasel from wing to wing of the great Merwing palace, there was happening in the East Tower that which, had she known of it, would have lent wings to her jewelled buskins.
CHAPTER XXIV
From a heart full of hate